As most sports fans know, athletes playing sports wear shoes (e.g., baseball, football, soccer, etc.) which often have cleats or unusual patterns on the bottom of their soles for traction purposes. Cleats used vary from sport to sport and from playing condition to playing condition. These cleats often get dirty or muddy and need to be cleaned to improve traction.
This is particularly a problem for baseball cleats that are unusually shaped and positioned in unusual places. For these and other reasons, baseball players usually encounter great difficulty getting the dirt off of their cleats. Baseball players typically use a popsicle stick to remove the dirt and mud from their cleats, which is not very effective mechanism, because popsicle sticks break and do not easily fit around baseball cleats. Similarly, pitchers take "ahh sticks" or tongue depressors out to the mound in an attempt to clean their cleats. "Ahh sticks" or tongue depressors are typically used by doctors to depress a patient's tongue to see the patient's throat. Cleaning cleats with "ahh sticks" does not work very well and generally takes several minutes to do (and essentially stops the baseball game when the pitcher cleans his cleats). In addition, like popsicle sticks, "ahh sticks" often break, which is why a pitchers mound is often littered with broken "ahh sticks." When the "ahh sticks" break, players are forced to use sticks, nails, and rocks, and even their fingers to clean their cleats, especially if there are not any more "ahh sticks" available. If players are forced to use their fingers, they have the additional problem of cleaning their fingers off, which is an important concern for pitchers. Some have even beat their shoes against the wall or ground or together to get dirt and mud off their shoes. None of these existing mechanisms and methods are very effective.